The iPhone and Its Possible Future

If that somebody is Steve Jobs, and that “something” is Apple’s phone, for the moment called iPhone (until justice decides whose name it rightfully is), then epithets like “revolutionary”, “spectacular”, “extraordinary” and “incredible” will not take long to appear.

Is iPhone the next step in smartphone evolution? Until June, when it will supposedly appear in Cingular’s offer (if it passes the FCC’s approval procedures), we have all the time we could need to bet for or against the future of this piece of equipment.

What Apple (which used to be Apple Computer) and/or the lucky ones that had the chance to test this technological Holy Grail have presented so far is unfortunately much too vague.

What do we know? To start with, we know that the iPhone will launch in June in the US. The 4 gigabyte version will cost 499 dollars. The 8 gigabyte version will cost 599 dollars. The device features a touch-screen input technology called Multi- Touch, controlled by sliding a finger across its touch-sensitive, 9- centimeter (3.5-inch), 160-pixel-per-inch display. The display automatically switches between landscape or portrait mode thanks to a built-in sensor.

The iPhone, which runs the Macintosh operating system, seamlessly syncs data with a desktop computer, including music and videos from iTunes, contacts, calendars, photos, notes, contacts, bookmarks and email accounts.

The 11.6-millimetre thick device also sports a 2-megapixel camera, headset jack, 3.5-millimetre audio jack, SIM tray, a sleep-wake switch, speaker, microphone and an iPod dock connector. The quad-band GSM plus EDGE phone also has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0 capabilities. Future versions will carry 3G capabilities.

The iPhone includes all the features of a regular video iPod. It also has Apple's Safari web browser, allowing it to view standard web pages, rather than WAP versions of pages. Integrated Google Maps functionality lets users look up a business and drop its phone number directly into the dialer.

The phone offers easy conference calling and a Visual Voicemail feature, which allows users to skip directly to voice mails they want to hear. The device's photo management software enables users to zoom in and out of pictures with a "pinching" motion, and to orient pictures in standard or landscape mode. When playing music, the iPhone can automatically adjust levels up or down as calls come in. this would be the short story and, iPhone fans, please forgive me if I’ve overlooked anything.

All in all, iPhone is indeed something different. Its problem though, as for many other hybrid devices is that, in striving to do too much, it might end up doing nothing. The iPhone is indisputably a gadget that all technology lovers would kill for as soon as tomorrow if it were in stores.

But have you asked yourselves how many of those billion people that acquired mobile phones last year are actually besotted with technology?

The iPhone is more of a video iPod that you can also use to make calls with rather than a mobile phone in the true sense of the word. Apple did not provide information on several features which emerge on the check list of any single person that is buying a mobile phone: battery lifetime, ability to add memory, existence of Java support, simplicity of connecting to a PC (whether or not special software is required), and price in case limiting to a certain network is not desired.

In other words, it’s still not clear where this phone stands in term of usability. Will it be adopted by users as an iPod with a phone or as a mobile phone with an iPod?

Many analysts are quick to see in Apple iPhone a piece of equipment that will revolutionize the market, their arguments relying mostly on parallels between what iPhone could do and what iPod did do for the music industry.

What those predicting a similar good fortune for the iPhone forget or neglect is the fact that the iPod appeared at a moment (in 2001) when there were at most 10 MP3 players with a hard disc and that iPod was virtually unrivaled. That is a situation which doesn’t resemble, at all, what is happening now on the mobile phone market, where players like Nokia, Motorola, Samsung or Sony Ericsson dictate the trends and have to launch tens of models in order to maintain their competitiveness.

None of this should leave the impression that iPhone doesn’t deserve its praise. It could perhaps temper your enthusiasm and help you realize that Apple is just starting down a road. Yes, it has won the first battle in a fascinating manner, but there’s a long way to go before the war ends.

What can be said now with certainty is that the iPhone has the potential to become an interesting gadget. It can become more than a mobile phone and it might be the equipment we’ll use in 2008 or 2009 to surf the Web from instead of a notebook or PC. Even maybe we won’t care very much whether it’s better or worse as a mobile phone, compared to Nokia or Samsung.

As it is, I’m convinced that all the reactions, criticism, controversy and praise that the iPhone has generated are being studied, analyzed, turned this way and that and it is possible that what we will see in June will include more enhancements than the actual version.

And while on this subject, allow me to speculate myself, since it is the fashion when it comes to the iPhone.

Last year in November, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, stated that mobile phones should be free for the consumers. Not for everyone, but for those who will accept to watch targeted forms of advertising. According to Reuters, Schmidt said that the mobile phones are used eight to 10 hours a day for talking, texting or Web access. "Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones. Eric Schmidt was among those invited on stage with Steve Jobs during the lunch of iPhone.

Should we expect the iPhone to be cheaper (free, not likely) for those that will accept to watch targeted forms of advertising? Time will tell, but we can expect lots of surprises from Apple and Google.